


all you have is your fire

by feminist14er



Series: build this fire higher, higher toward the sky [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013), The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 14:03:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3532016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feminist14er/pseuds/feminist14er
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy's whole world is Octavia. And then it grows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all you have is your fire

**Author's Note:**

> Oops, I wrote a companion piece to "the fire is coming", this time from Bellamy's perspective. One of my lovely reviewers suggested this, and it wouldn't quite leave me alone, so this has rapidly turned into a series.

One of the first things he remembers is his mother thrusting his baby sister into his arms. He remembers giving her the name Octavia, remembers the infant turning in his arms. Remembers telling her stories of heroes and monsters. He never thought those stories would have an ounce of truth to them, but he’s wrong, so wrong.

\--

He pilots his first jaeger when he’s twenty. He’d old, older than all the other candidates, and he’s here for one reason: his sister. Their mother dies, and suddenly he’s in the middle of a small farming town with a fifteen year old who likes eyeliner and boys too much. He’s thrust into his guardian role, and he’s grateful that they’re not separated, but up until now, his expertise has been fixing engines on beat-up trucks. They’re in the Midwest, so he’s ignored the apocalypse happening around them. More and more people have fled inland since the kaiju attacks have started, and it has kept them in food and clothing up until now, but he can’t earn enough to support both of them, doesn’t think he can keep his precocious sister out of trouble in the middle of nowhere all by himself. 

So, instead of keeping her in the only place they’ve ever known, he uproots her, takes her to the first coastal city with a jaeger recruiting program, and signs his name. He feels foolish when he thinks about the heroes in the past, signing away their names to protect others. He doesn’t feel a sense of pride or accomplishment; he feels a grim determination that they’re going to make this work, and to hell with normal.

The world’s ending anyway, right?

\--

He hates his initial jaeger partner. He didn’t think it was possible to hate someone and still be drift compatible with them, but somehow, he’s managed to find this smug asshole. He’s almost tempted to sabotage their first kaiju takedown, but he needs this job, needs Octavia in school somewhere stable.

They take it down, no problem, but Bellamy can’t quite get past the feeling he has that his partner is ready to sabotage _him_ at any moment. He doesn’t like to think that he’s paranoid, but he keeps looking at him out of the corner of his eye, as if he’s waiting for Bellamy to slip up. Bellamy grits his teeth, keeps his head down, and stays out of the way whenever he can, but he makes sure he locks the door to his and Octavia’s room, and he keeps her in his sight any time he can.

When he finds Octavia cornered by his partner, his brain shorts out. When he comes back to himself, hearing Octavia calling his name, he’s broken his right hand, and his partner has blood pouring out of his nose.

Octavia is crying, and he’s covered in blood, but he takes her into his arms anyway, cradles her head against his shoulder, and tries to soothe her. He hauls his partner up by the back of his shirt, drags his along as he takes Octavia back to their quarters and locks the door behind him when he leaves.

He wants nothing more than to sit with her, soothe her, and never let her leave again, but he has to make sure his piece of shit partner is dishonorably discharged, first.

The Commander takes one look at them, removes Bellamy from jaeger duty, and court-martials his partner.

When Bellamy has put Octavia to bed, he walks through the hanger and wonders what it says about him that he was drift compatible with someone so despicable.

\--

He can’t find a partner for another year. The Commander tries him again and again with new recruits, existing pilots, and none of them can form the neural handshake.

He’s regretting uprooting Octavia, but he’s still working, just on the jaegers themselves. His skills as a mechanic aren’t a great fit for the jaegers, but he’s got a feel for the machines after running them, and his awe in looking at them never entirely fades. Working on them gives him a quieter satisfaction than piloting them, and he’s still welcome, which is what matters.

The Commander also begins to consult with him. He’s been tried with so many new pilots that he starts to get a feel for who would be compatible, and his skills as strategist grow. It isn’t what he expected to do, when he moved out here, but his fascination with history seems to be paying off; he understands military history and strategy in a unique way, and when the Commander looks at him with growing respect, he feels some pride.

In the dark of the night, though, he begins to wonder if he’s defective.

\--

When Octavia turns seventeen, the Commander brings her into the fold.

Bellamy remembers walking in the hanger the first time, how Octavia’s entire face lit up. She’d never seen anything so glorious, she said, as the beautiful machines built to fight the monsters from Hell. Bellamy has always wanted her to go to college, pursue a career away from the lassitude of the Midwest, and definitely away from the peril of the kaiju war. Still, this is where he brought her, and when he sees her fight for the first time, he knows that this is where she belongs.

And, to his unending relief, he has a partner again. It’s a little weird, he thinks, to have his sister able to poke around in his thoughts, but he didn’t realize how much he missed piloting until he’s doing it again.

If they aren’t one of the best teams, they are competent and meet every expectation set for them. Octavia finishes school in between fights, and she trains even harder than he does. Female pilots are uncommon still, and Octavia, for all her effervescence, is a slight woman. It doesn’t hurt that Clarke Griffin is practically a household name, and Octavia is nothing if not competitive. As it is, their own Commander is one of the youngest Commanders to fight kaiju, and if she’s terrifying, she’s also electrifying to everyone who works under her.

\-- 

They stay at Northern Pacific for a year after Octavia becomes a pilot before transferring to the Eastern Pacific station.

The kaiju attacks are worsening, and _of course_ , Bellamy thinks bitterly, it means that everyone is going to stop funding the jaeger program. Their Commander, as young as she is, decides she’s retiring rather than being suborned at another station, and she submits transfer requests for all of her pilots that want to move rather than ending their careers.

Bellamy doesn’t really envy the pilots that decide to retire; these days, he can’t really imagine not fighting the kaiju, not falling asleep thinking about new fighting techniques. He hasn’t given up his unofficial job as strategist, and he’s hoping that at least a few pilot teams come with them, because even if they aren’t friends, exactly, he knows how they fight, how talented they are.

The day they’re set to fly down to Eastern, the news comes in: Jake Griffin is dead, and Clarke Griffin is missing, presumed dead. Their infamous jaeger, ArkAngel, hasn’t been spotted yet, and the Commander at their new station, Abby Griffin, has just lost her most talented team and her entire family. Bellamy and Octavia share a glance. If they go down, at least they go down together, and they leave no one behind.

\--

When they reach Eastern, though, that changes. Two other teams and their jaegers traveled with them to one of the last Pacific outposts, and when they get there, they’re greeted by a hulking man who introduces himself as Lincoln. Bellamy grasps his hand when it’s offered, and he appreciates the solidity of the handshake, but he decidedly does not appreciate the looks that Lincoln shares with Octavia.

He also decidedly does not appreciate when Commander Griffin forces the new teams to train separately. Objectively, he knows that it’s for the best; it’s important to integrate the new pilots, and there’s always the possibility that teams can be re-assigned to be more effective. He knows this, but when he’s the one being re-assigned, he’s not even remotely pleased.

He’s even less pleased when he realizes his sister, the one thing he has left in this life, is piloting with Lincoln, and he is once again without a partner. 

\--

Because he doesn’t know Commander Griffin, and isn’t sure he even likes her, he stays entirely out of the way, doesn’t train new recruits because there aren’t any, and doesn’t offer any strategic advice. He politely asks to be assigned to the engine room, and when the Commander assents, he is grateful to be met with the dry sarcasm of Raven Reyes.

She’s absolutely the best mechanic he’s ever seen, and her own knowledge of this fact is incredibly hot.

He doesn’t really feel strongly about her, romantically, but when she kisses him after work one day, he’s perfectly happy to run his hands along her ribcage, over her breasts until she’s sighing into his mouth and dragging him back to her room.

He doesn’t mark her up, doesn’t want to, although he’s done it with other women. He likes her, certainly, but he gets the feeling that neither of them want the romantic entanglements of a relationship. He groans when he slides inside her, and her breathy laugh makes him smile. She’s a hell of a woman, in any case.

\--

He doesn’t sleep with Raven again, and they don’t really talk about it. They have a good working dynamic, and he has no doubt that if they had sex again, it would be equally good, but he’s also got eyes, and he can see the way Wick and Raven look at each other when they think the other isn’t paying attention. He doesn’t feel slighted in the least, but he doesn’t want to come between two people who might genuinely have something.

He’s never lonely at Eastern. When he’s not tuning up the jaegers (and he always, _always_ takes responsibility for Octavia and Lincoln’s, which, incidentally, used to be Octavia and _Bellamy’s_ ), he’s in with Monty and Jasper, the kaiju nerds, or sparring with Octavia when she’s not out fighting. He’s not mad at her, exactly, because he’s seen the way she and Lincoln pilot their jaeger, and it’s poetry. If he and Octavia were drift compatible and functional, Octavia and Lincoln far exceed that. He can’t be bitter about a drift that generates the kind of seamless motion he sees with the two of them.

He can, however, be extremely angry when he finds out that they’re sleeping together. Their past Commander had no trouble with it, and while Commander Griffin doesn’t have an explicit policy _against_ it, he knows she frowns on it, and he doesn’t want Octavia to be treated unfairly, either by their colleagues or their boss because she’s a woman sleeping with her co-pilot.

If they get into several shouting matches about it, the others are good enough not to comment.

In spite of their disagreement, they both slowly realize they are forming a family at Eastern the way they never did at Northern. Octavia loves Monty and Jasper, and she finds her first female friend in Raven. Bellamy is proud, whatever the circumstances, to watch Octavia evolve into this complex and amazing woman.

\--

Commander Griffin leaves for two weeks after getting a message that leaves her skin ashen under her tan. Bellamy happens to be in her office; apparently Raven took notice of his understanding of strategy and reported to the Commander. When she called Bellamy to her office, he hoped she might have a partner for him. Instead, she’d been talking to him about joining her team to advise on the strategy of their war against the kaiju. She’s just started talking about something Monty and Jasper have been working when she gets the message and excuses herself.

She’s gone, no word to anybody, for two weeks.

When she returns, Raven disappears and returns beaming. Wick exchanges a look with her, and when Raven nods, Wick whoops and picks Raven up in a hug. Bellamy watches this with a sort of fond consternation that he reserves almost exclusively for these two and their unusual dynamic.

When Raven finds her feet again, Bellamy asks, “What happened that has you so cheerful?”

“Clarke’s home!” She says, looking like she still can’t entirely believe the words coming out of her mouth.

“Commander Griffin’s daughter?” He asks, his brow furrowing. “Wasn’t she killed along with her father?”

Raven’s face falls a little, and Bellamy immediately feels badly. “She didn’t die, actually. The Commander got word a couple of weeks ago that she might be working on the Wall up north.” Bellamy snorts when he hears that. The Wall is for people who’ve given up entirely. And for people who are delusional. The Clarke Griffin he’d always heard about didn’t seem like the type. “Commander Griffin went to try and get her to come home. She’s the best pilot we’ve ever seen, and Abby thought it would be a shame to lose her.”

Bellamy can literally feel the look of surprise on his face. “She thought it would be a shame to lose her as a pilot? What about the fact that she’s her _daughter_?”

Raven shifts her weight, drops her gaze. “It’s complicated between the Commander and Clarke. Clarke started piloting at fifteen. It’s all she’s ever known, and I think it’s been hard on her.”

“Oh yeah, poor Princess.” It’s a nickname that was tossed around a lot at Northern. Clarke Griffin, star jaeger pilot, daughter of two infamous jaeger pilots, who always had a family, had a place where she belonged.

Raven’s head snaps up, and she glares at him. “Don’t call her that. Especially not to her face.”

Bellamy’s a little taken aback, to be honest. “I didn’t know you knew her well enough to care. I always assumed she was the star jaeger pilot, didn’t have time for anyone else.”

“Well, I’ve known Clarke since we were kids, and you won’t use that nickname around me if you know what’s good for you.” Raven says it with a finality, and Bellamy respects her, so he shuts up.

When he’s asked to take her clothes to Clarke, though, he definitely feels like he’s being assigned to wait on royalty.

\--

He’s sleepless that night, and as he’s thinking about the Spartans, it hits him like a lightning bolt. He’s the only unassigned pilot. Either Commander Griffin is going to shake everything up again (and jesus, didn’t they all just get settled in their current assignments?), or the assumption is that they’re drift compatible, and Commander Griffin has some sort of sixth sense for that sort of thing.

He’s not sure whether he should burst out laughing or hit something.

\--

Suddenly, she’s absolutely everywhere. He sees her at the mess hall, the training center, even the _library_. She’s hard to miss, honestly, with that shock of gold hair. She honest-to-god looks like a princess, and he’s sure that the nickname came from that. He hasn’t stopped calling her that in his head, and he’s certain he’s called her that to her face at least once. If her face twisted up in a snarl, he didn’t notice, he’s quite sure.

He doesn’t talk about her with Raven when he’s working on the jaegers, but he also sees a lot less of Raven.

ArkAngel is back, and Raven is devoting herself to the care of this new and giant machine.

Bellamy remembers the first time he saw a picture of ArkAngel, saw it on TV. He’s sure that he saw an interview with Jake and Clarke at some point, but he thinks that Clarke was young enough that her father did all the talking. Still, he knows she was in the spotlight at a pretty early age, and as good a pilot as Octavia is, he’s glad that wasn’t her upbringing.

Still, ArkAngel is an impressive jaeger. She’s old, he knows that, but the machine manages to exude authority in a way that he expected from Clarke, as well. He wonders if she used to, and if feeling her father die has caused her to shrink.

\--

She’s in the training rooms every day, he notices. She always wears shirts with sleeves, unlike Octavia, who trains in as little clothing as possible. He’s not sure if she’s trying to hide her injuries, or if she’s always been modest, but he finds that he’s curious, and that alarms him for some unspeakable reason. He really doesn’t actually want anything to do with her. He’s not sure he believes that she’s capable of piloting again, and he’s not sure he trusts her to be a good co-pilot.

It’s selfish, but he really wants to survive this war, and he’s heard rumors that she single piloted ArkAngel to shore after losing her father. She can’t possibly be ready to pilot a jaeger, maybe shouldn’t pilot ever again, but here she is, running on the treadmill, lifting weights, punching the bag. He tries not to stare, but he can practically see the resentment shimmering along her skin as she hits the bag again and again. He knows she was called away from the Wall, and he wonders why she came back.

\--

He still spars with Octavia from time to time, which is what he’s doing when he gets distracted and sees Lincoln talking to her. Octavia takes the moment to press her advantage, but he’s able to sweep her staff aside in time, just before she cracks him on the collarbone with it. She grins as he beats her back, asks “Distracted, big brother?” tauntingly before stepping toward him again.

He laughs at her, says “Hardly,” and keeps moving. If he watches Clarke and Lincoln out of the corner of his eye, sees Clarke’s appraisal, he doesn’t think too much of it.

\--

They lock eyes after he fights with Octavia about Lincoln, and he wants to look down in embarrassment over publicly arguing with his sister, but he’s not going to let himself be ashamed in front of her.

Her eyes are shockingly clear, he realizes, just before she looks away, a flush on her face.

He doesn’t know what he feels toward this woman, but he doesn’t particularly want to think about it, so he picks up his tray and leaves, following briskly after Octavia.

\--

She almost runs him over one day, and right after he makes a snide comment, he sees that she dropped a tin. It looks like something Monty would make, and when he looks at her, he knows. She’s not healing well, or she’s in pain, but she needed something and refused to go see the doctor.

He’s not sure if he’s impressed or worried for her, and he has no _reason_ to be worried for her, but he increasingly doesn’t think she’s a princess (even if the nickname was literally the first thing out of his mouth just now), doesn’t know what he thinks, but as soon as she meets his eyes, her eyes darken in anger, and “Don’t feel badly for me,” before she pushes past him.

He feels a flash of irritation, but he also watches her walk away, her loose hair swinging against her back, and he breathes out, doesn’t even know what to think.

\--

It’s with resignation that he marches toward the Commander’s office. When he knocks at her door, she gestures for him to enter, before looking up at him.

He has no idea how old Commander Griffin is, but the deep lines on her face show the cost of her job. He doesn’t particularly like her, finds it vaguely appalling that Raven thinks she went to look for her pilot-daughter, not just her daughter, but: he does respect her. The Commander has no tolerance for harassment, has the largest number of female pilots at her disposal, has an incredible staff, and runs the tightest ship he’s seen.

She looks him over, assessing him, and he fights not to fidget under her gaze. “Bellamy, you’ve been an incredible asset in many ways since you transferred here, I hope you know that. I’m short on praise, as you’ll no doubt have noticed, but I appreciate your contributions.” He nods his thanks when she pauses, and braces himself for what he has guessed is coming. 

“That being said, you trained as a pilot, and you and your sister had an excellent record. I know you have your own feelings about her reassignment – “ He chokes back a laugh at this, tries not to grimace, “-but I think it’s high time to get you back in a jaeger. I have a hunch, and it might only that, but I think you’ll be compatible with Clarke. I have told her she’ll be having an officiated session soon, and I would like you to be present also.”

Bellamy looks at her, thinks for a minute. “Do I actually have a choice?” He doesn’t want to offend the Commander, knows that she could have simply ordered him to be there. He wants to know why she didn’t.

The Commander sighs, and it seems to him that the lines on her face deepen. “Bellamy, you know as well as Monty and Jasper do that the kaiju attacks are getting worse. You knew that even before your former division closed, before you transferred here. I don’t know for sure, as I said, if you and Clarke can establish a neural handshake. Some of the time, I’m not sure if Clarke still can. She’s barely willing to, but she’s here, and you’re here, and I’d like to think that it might just be enough. If you truly don’t want to be there, I won’t order you, but I’m hoping enough of you still wants to pilot badly enough that you’ll be there. God knows that’s why Clarke is here. She thinks the jaeger is part of her soul, and she might not be wrong, but I think that’s the only reason she’s here.” The Commander rubs a hand along her face, and the gesture speaks so clearly to exhaustion that Bellamy can’t help but nod.

“I’ll be there.”

\--

When he arrives, she’s already there, and she looks _awful_. Her skin must be like her mother’s, he thinks, because she has the same ashy look that he’s seen on the Commander, and he teases her about it immediately. She glares at him, and she swings the staff first, coming after him in a series of controlled attacks that pack a surprisingly fierce punch for someone so small.

He probably should have expected this. Everyone always underestimated O, to their peril. He may have done the same.

Nevertheless, he parries her quickly, keeps her turning on her feet, and his heart lightens in a way he hasn’t felt in months. As soon as he feels it, he knows: if Clarke can still establish a neural handshake, they can drift together.

Still, it’s a fight, and he does want to see if he can throw her off her game. He’s been wondering about her injuries for months, but especially since he saw her with Monty’s salve, and he’s curious how much physical damage she has. They slowly progress into more difficult combinations, each pushing the other for weak spots.

Sweat is dripping from his hair straight into his eyes, and he has to blink more than he’s comfortable with to be able to see, but he’s still moving smoothly, watching her as much as he can afford to between the clack of staves. She’s sweating too, but she’s showing no signs of tension anywhere, and he’s relieved.

Finally, the Commander calls it a draw. She sends out the next candidate while Clarke wipes her face and sips at her water, and Bellamy gets to watch her go through the motions with another person, and another, and another. She’s a strong fighter, he can tell, and she moves well. If she’s in pain, he thinks, she’s capable of hiding it.

She succeeds in disarming each of her next opponents, and he almost can’t help but be a little impressed. Whatever nickname she might have, and for whatever reasons she might have earned it, she didn’t earn her pilot spot through luck or privilege; she earned it through clear talent, and he suspects, a lot of grit. It’s not easy, according to O, to be as small as they are and keep up, either on the sparring mats or in the jaeger, with someone who towers over them.

When there are no more opponents, Clarke stands on the mat for just a moment, her chest heaving. A spark lights somewhere in his chest when her staff sags in her hand and she ducks her head, trying to get her breathing back under control. When she raises her head, she meets his gaze, and for the first time since they met, her face doesn’t tighten. She offers a small nod, and he returns it. They both know.

\--

O shakes her head when he relays the news the Commander gave him. The Commander confirmed what he already knew – they’re going to try the neural handshake.

“I don’t like it, Bell,” she says. She’s frowning, picking at a thread in her jacket. He wants to reach out and make her stop, but he knows she’d glare at him and go back to picking at it immediately. “I haven’t talked to her much, so I guess I can’t tell, but how stable can she possibly be? She tried to give up piloting entirely, tried to get as far from here as possible. She let her own mother think she was _dead_ , for heaven’s sake.”

Bellamy nods, looks at her. “I know, O. But you saw us fight. You know what it feels like when you find someone you’re compatible with. She and I both knew. The Commander knows.”

Octavia snorts. “The Commander knows shit. She knows what needs to be done to win, and that’s all she cares about. She doesn’t care about the human cost along the way.”

“We knew that already. O, I haven’t been in a jaeger in a year again. It’s not your fault, I’m not pinning it on you, but I want to be able to fight, and this is the only way it’s happening. The Commander isn’t even sure if Clarke can still establish a neural handshake, if her subconscious is even willing to try. It might be a total failure.”

“And if it isn’t? You really want to pilot with the Princess?”

“Look, I don’t know if I like Clarke or not, but you know she’s talented. You looked up to her for years. She’s part of the reason piloting was even an option for you.”

Octavia has the good grace to look moderately ashamed. “I know. And she can’t help her parents, right? I’m just trying to look out for you, big brother, just like you did for me.”

He’s speechless, really. He just reaches out and pulls her into a hug, and if she sniffles a bit, he doesn’t say anything. And when she goes to leave, he doesn’t tell her not to lecture Clarke. He knows, and is constantly reminded: he raised her to be her own person, and he’s never been more proud.

\--

The neural handshake goes off without a hitch, at least from the outside. He finds Clarke already in the cockpit, on the right side. He has it on good authority that she used to pilot the left (O always wanted to be on the left, because of it, before they knew anything about Clarke Griffin, really), but there she is, with a look on her face that dares him to say anything. He doesn’t, steps to the left side, and nods at her when he’s ready.

Raven and Wick start everything up on their end, and he can feel it working, can feel himself slowly adjusting to the influx of information from Clarke’s brain, and he knows she’s doing the same. They establish the drift remarkably quickly, he thinks, and while he’s not surprised, he’s also interested that he hasn’t seen any memories from Clarke’s accident, from her father’s death.

He’s never asked her about it, he realizes, hasn’t even really spoken more than a handful of words to her, and all of a sudden, he doesn’t even know if _she_ remembers the accident.

He thinks about it after dinner, after they’ve left ArkAngel, when he’s lying awake in his bed. Even if she didn’t remember it consciously, would her subconscious still remember the accident? Should he have seen something from it? He should just ask her, he knows, but it would be a sensitive subject with anyone, and she’s prickly. And if she doesn’t remember, she might be offended about him not knowing, and it’s none of his business one way or another, really, but it nags at him all the same.

\--

When he realizes that night that he hasn’t even spoken more than a couple of sentences to her, he starts making more of an effort. They still don’t talk, but they eat together, sometimes with the others, all of whom Clarke knows, and clearly loves. He still doesn’t know what her relationship with her mom is like, but he can tell that for Clarke, just like for him and Octavia, this is her real family. She’s found it, rather than being born into it, and if that isn’t the least Princess-y thing he’s ever heard, he doesn’t know what is.

She’s serious, he realizes. She spends her free time reading science books and medical texts, and when he asks, she tells him that she also trained as a medic, when she had free time.

They still don’t talk much, but everything about Clarke Griffin screams duty to him. She has done what people have asked her to her whole life, and if she’s occasionally stuck up, he thinks it’s because she’s been in the public eye for half of her life. When he asks Raven about it, she says that the Griffins moved here for the Commander to take the post when Clarke was ten. She started training shortly thereafter, and Bellamy can’t imagine a childhood learning how to pilot jaegers and stitch up wounds from the kaiju war. He’s suddenly very glad he kept Octavia away from this as long as he did, bad food and too-cold house and all.

\--

It is on their second attempt to go after a kaiju that everything he’s slowly building goes to hell in a handbasket. Looking back, he thinks it’s a miracle they didn’t both end up dead, and he knows that it’s a testament to his partner’s long-held training that they survive, even if she’s also the reason they end up in such a compromising position in the first place.

It starts out like any other mission, and their neural handshake seems fine, just like it has any other time. It’s when the second kaiju erupts out of the ocean, though, that he feels the first tremors along the connection, and when it goes for their side, he can tell: Clarke’s about to chase the rabbit. He’s yelling, suddenly, still trying to fight off the kaiju on his side, but he’s been catapulted into her memories, and all of a sudden, it’s so clear: she remembers. She remembers everything, and if there’s a small part of her father’s death she doesn’t consciously remember, the experience is printed on her subconscious and they’re both living through every gritty detail, from his death, to her killing the kaiju and walking to land before collapsing. He can feel the strain in her muscles, the tension in her every nerve as she moves slowly, so slowly toward shore, and he is horrified with every step she takes.

He’s desperate, trying to shake her out of it, trying not to live it with her, trying to hold off at least one of the kaiju, and suddenly there’s a shrieking, shearing noise as the kaiju Clarke had been holding off scrapes through the side of ArkAngel and rakes its claws along Clarke’s undamaged side. The pain must be enough to knock her back into the neural handshake, he thinks, because all of a sudden she’s jerking to attention and struggling to pilot the right side.

They kill both kaiju, but he can already tell that Clarke is pouring blood from her side, and he’s suddenly frantic to try and get them back to the hanger, to staunch the blood coming out of her.

They get picked up, and Clarke’s head starts to loll, and he’s shouting again, telling her to stay with him, and she snaps to attention again. It’s only when they get to the hanger that she’s racing out of the pilot seat, and he’s two steps behind her, just in time to pull her hair back that she’s violently sick. He’s pulled his suit off and taken the shirt from underneath and is trying to stop the bleeding, but he can tell already that it isn’t enough, and he’s picking her up and racing toward the medical center. She passes out on the way, and his heart lurches, and it’s suddenly clear as day to him, but he cares for this woman, so much more than he thought he could, and she _must_ survive.

\--

He’s kicked out of the hospital immediately, his hovering getting in the way of Jackson’s job, and he’s sitting outside, head in his hands, only half dressed when O runs up to him, grabbing his face in her hands and clearly checking him for injuries.

“I’m fine, O, I’m fine. Clarke took the hit.” He says, trying to reassure her. He holds her wrists in his hands, tries to take her hands off her face.

Octavia’s face is white, pale in a way he’s never seen, and he knows: she is terrified. “Is Clarke going to be okay?” She asks.

He shakes his head, eyes dropping and dread swamping him. “I don’t know, O. She lost a lot of blood.”

“What _happened_?” She says, a frantic note in her voice.

“She chased the rabbit.” He doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to reveal too much. It’s too personal, drifting with someone, and what he’s seen – he never wants to see it again. Doesn’t want to have ever seen it, ever felt the agony of feeling another person die. He hasn’t even experienced it first-hand, and he never wants to feel it again.

Octavia’s jaw is twitching, and there is a strange light in her eyes. “O, it’s not her fault.”

“The hell it wasn’t! It’s someone’s fault, and you almost _died_ , Bell. This is exactly what I was worried about!” She’s up, storming along the hall, and Lincoln is watching from the sidelines, arms crossed. 

“O, seriously. She’s been trying to shield me, I think, from seeing what she experienced. I didn’t even know someone could _do_ that, and the strength it must have taken…” he trails off. “Don’t be mad at her.”

She turns and looks at him, and he registers the surprise on her face. They lock eyes for what feels like hours before she nods, ever so slowly, and comes to sit down beside him. He has no idea what she read in his gaze, but whatever it was, it is enough to soften her. She laces her fingers through his, and leans back against the wall, holding vigil with him.

\--

It is almost a full day before he knows that she survived the gaping wound in her side. He can’t see her, according to Jackson; she’s sedated to try and get her platelet count up, and she can’t have visitors yet.

Instead, he gets a visitor. The Commander drops into a seat next to him, and he knows: she needs to know what happened.

He can’t quite bring himself to tell her. Instead, he simply says that they lost the neural handshake, and tells her to talk to Raven and Wick for more information.

He stays outside her room for days on end, until Octavia comes to get him and shoves him into a shower and clean clothes. He brings food back, and when he returns, Raven is there. They sit in tense silence, each waiting for news. 

He falls into a routine, sitting outside and waiting. He doesn’t go in, even when she’s finally allowed visitors. Her first visitor is Raven, and it ends with terrifying beeping noises and a white-faced Raven. All she says is, “She started bleeding again, and they can’t get it to stop.” He learns, after many questions, that Clarke has come into contact with kaiju blood, and it’s delaying her healing process. She’s sedated again, this time for weeks, and he feels despair creeping into his heart.

Finally, the Commander orders him back to work. He helps Raven repair ArkAngel, although looking at her damage the first time is absolutely nauseating. When he’s not doing that, he’s sitting in with Monty and Jasper, planning strategy and learning more about their research into the breach.

He sits outside her door in the afternoons and wait. If he were a religious man, he’d pray, but he’s certain his soul is too dark for his prayers to help her.

\--

It is three weeks later when he realizes she’s finally awake. He immediately asks the Commander if he can see her, but she looks at him, pity in her eyes, and slowly shakes her head. He’s about to protest, ask why he’s not allowed, when she says, “Bellamy, she doesn’t want to see you. She doesn’t want to see anyone. 

He reels back, doesn’t understand. When he prods her further, she just says that Clarke won’t see her anymore, either. She’s being released in two days, but she’s not coming back to active duty yet, probably won’t ever come back.

The Commander walks away slowly, and he can only stand and watch, confusion and betrayal pouring over him in waves.

\--

There is a sense of uneasiness in his interactions with everyone after that. It’s no secret that Clarke has locked herself away in her rooms, is refusing to see anyone, and he just – he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t want to abandon her, doesn’t want to disrupt her healing process, in whatever form it takes.

He really doesn’t know what’s changed that he’s suddenly at the point of caring so much, but he does, he aches with it, aches for her suffering, feels it like his own personal loss.

He doesn’t visit her, but he knows Octavia keeps trying to talk to her, keeps hoping for entrance. It’s when he sees O’s face, white and shining with tears, that he knows: Clarke’s _bad_.

\--

He learns O’s lock-picking skills, and he starts leaving food for her. He moves through the shadows of her room at night, letting her sleep, but he can see: she isn’t eating. Her hair is dirty, and she moves restlessly in her sleep.

He wants nothing more than to comfort her, take her into his arms and never let her go, and he _can’t_.

He watches her breathe, in and out, in and out. Knows her corporeal form is here, tries to let it be enough.

\--

He doesn’t know how long it goes on, leaving food for her, seeing the drawings scattered around her room, feeling Octavia’s eyes on his back when he takes food out of the mess hall.

Finally, O takes over. Between the two of them, she and Lincoln get Clarke into a shower, and he knows he should leave well enough alone, but he goes to wait outside with Lincoln all the same, desperate to look into her eyes and see something there, _anything_ that would say she’s willing to recover, to try again.

Lincoln isn’t having it. “She only just left her room, Bellamy. She hasn’t been willing to see anyone, and she’s still flinching when anyone comes near her. She’s not ready to see you.”

He can feel the muscles in his jaw clenching, but he nods, turns and walks back down the hall.

\--

The attacks are coming closer together, and he knows the situation is only getting more dire. Octavia and Lincoln are going out almost everyday, and the other pilots are starting to look just as weary. He can’t fight, but he sits for hours with Monty and Jasper, communicates their data to the Commander, works up possible strategies and outcomes with her. He’s running himself into the ground trying to avoid Clarke, giving her the time and space she needs.

He needs her back, _they_ need her back, if they’re going to survive.

\--

Screams wake him, and he’s bolt upright in bed, running out of his room and into hers before he even thinks about it. She sees him with wild eyes, and he’s reaching for her, trying to calm her down, but she’s shrinking from him, her sobs intensifying, and he’s in agony that she won’t let him in.

Lincoln comes barreling through the door seconds later, and he’s shaking his head at Bellamy again, telling him to get out, and with a final glance at Clarke, curled in a ball away from him, he leaves.

\--

It’s days later that he wakes to the same noise, and he doesn’t even think about it before he goes back. She can tell him no, and he’ll leave, but he has to try again.

She’s on the floor, and he can already tell that something’s different. He goes to pick her up, place her gently back on her bed, and he can feel the spasming in her back, knows she’s in pain. He takes her hand away from her mouth, uncurls her fingers, and wraps them around his. He’s babbling, he knows, frantic to figure out what hurts and how to help her, and when she gestures to her side, he takes a deep breath to calm himself, gently starts working on the knots he can feel wrapped tight, tight, tight under her skin.

She slowly eases under his hands, and he can feel relief sweeping through his veins that he can give her this. When she’s finally able to stretch back out, she turns to look at him, catches his eyes and holds. It’s the first time he’s been able to look her in the eye in months, and he feels a measure of peace returning to his body, even as he watches her close off again.

He gently untangles their hands, walks out the door.

\--

She stops sleeping, he realizes, after that. He sees her at night, wandering the halls when he’s on his way back from talking to Raven and Wick after a long day with Monty, Jasper, and the Commander. Her hair streams out behind her, but she’s in her workout clothes, and he realizes, looking at her, that she’s trying, really trying to put herself back together.

His heart is a little lighter that night, when he finally turns his light off.

\--

He starts trailing her at night, watching what she’s doing. When he realizes she’s taken to running at night, he starts to join her. She’s surly about it, at first, because of course she is, but she allows him to join her, and it becomes a routine for him. If he’s lower on sleep, his life suddenly includes her again, and he can feel the change in himself, the lightness in his heart at being near her again.

He’d worry about that, but he’s known for a while now that he’s a goner for this woman. He thinks, just maybe, that it’s not a one-sided thing.

When she takes him out of the hanger one night and asks for a story, he’s surprised, but he can feel the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. She falls asleep halfway through the story, and he picks her up, cradling her to his chest, takes her back to her room and tucks her in. If he brushes his lips against her forehead before he leaves, no one is there to notice.

\--

She reappears in public after that, and he can still see that she’s smaller than she was before, more defensive than she was before, but he and the others close around her, protecting her from the stares of others. No one says anything to her, and she eases up on her scowl.

\--

He’s not sure he’s ever been as scared as he is the day Octavia comes limping in, blood pouring from her leg, and he’s frantic, but Clarke is panicking, and he needs to protect both of them, and he’s torn, but the Commander is there, insisting that Clarke do her job, and he can help her do this, he can. It’s for her, but it’s also for Octavia.

If he snaps at the Commander in the process, fortunately she seems nonplussed.

Clarke forces her head up, meets his eyes, and nods. She heads off, and he sits down, adrenaline humming in his veins. He’s known, objectively, that things were getting worse. Seeing the damage inflicted on his sister, though, is a visceral knowledge of “worse” that he’s not sure he can stomach.

Finally, after what seems like hours, but is probably only minutes, Clarke comes back out, Octavia leaning heavily on her for support, and relief washes over him like a wave. He’s squeezing Octavia tight, his eyes burning as he struggles to control himself. He and Clarke lock eyes again before she smiles softly and walks out the door.

“It was a category four, Bell. I’ve never seen anything like it,” O whispers. He can feel the adrenaline still coursing through her; her body feels like it’s humming, and he grips her a little tighter before letting go.

“Come on, you should sit down,” he says, guiding her to one of the seats. “Was it only one?" 

She nods, takes a deep breath. “It was huge, Bell. Fighting techniques like nothing we’ve seen before, and you know Lincoln and I have seen some pretty weird shit in the past couple of months, but nothing like this. And I swear, its nervous system was still active even after we killed it. It went down, and we thought it was dead, were certain it was dead, but it still managed to strike through the hull. I think we were lucky that this was the worst damage we sustained.” Her face is ashy when she finishes, and she’s swaying a bit. He reaches out, steadies her. 

“I’m going to go talk to Monty and Jasper, okay? Let’s get you lying down first.” She nods, and she must be beat, he thinks, because she hasn’t taken orders from him in years.

When she’s settled, he heads off toward the lab, talks them through what O just relayed to him. The two young men look at each other, and they share a worried glance, their surprise evident. “They shouldn’t be getting stronger this soon,” Monty says slowly. “Unless we’re wrong about the timing of everything. But that means…that means that they’re stepping up their attack schedule, and we don’t know _why._ ”

He doesn’t really know what to say, and from the looks on their faces, they don’t either. He slumps down, trying to stave off the headache he knows is forming, before looking back up at them. “Let me know if anything changes. I’ll report to the Commander, let her know to come talk to you.”

\--

He’s walking out of the Commander’s office, his headache pounding through his head now, when Clarke stalks up to him and pokes him in the chest. Just looking at her, he knows: she’s found out what they’ve been keeping from her. He really doesn’t want to do this now, but one look in her eyes and he sees there’s no getting out of it.

She’s furious, and he understands that, but: he’s been terrified for months that she’d never recover, worried that she was self-harming, could count her ribs for a while, and she’s worth protecting, her recovery is important, piloting or not. He gets right in her space to tell her this, and it’s as this realization is hitting him that she moves forward, presses her lips to his, and he can only thank whatever god there is before he’s pressing back into her, running his hands along her body, and it’s _hers_ again, the one he remembers watching from before the accident, and she might not be whole, might not be whole ever again, but he thinks that this could be enough.

His heart is so light, and he just wants to kiss this woman forever, lay her down and look at every scar, every part of her, but they _can’t_. “We can’t do this. Not like this.” It takes every ounce of willpower he has to say the words, to look away from her blazing eyes, and then it’s a fight between them again, and she has to understand: they can’t do this if they want to pilot again. She has to be whole, and she knows as well as he does that the Commander frowns on fraternization between pilots.

When she looks back to his face, there’s frustration written there, but grit and determination too, and she stalks off.

He sags against the wall, his headache forgotten for the rushing of the blood in his veins.

This girl, this girl, this girl, his heart seems to say.

\--

And it’s a whirlwind after that, a whirlwind of training, and Clarke, and seeing ArkAngel with her again, hands entwined and a totally innocent look on her face, his bashful grin at her. It’s hard to imagine loving this woman out of any other circumstance, he thinks. They barely know each other, and yet he knows everything there is to know. He wants to know everything, wants nothing more than to crack her open and understand every molecule of her soul. He imagines the drift is as close to that as it gets, and whatever it was that got him here, he is grateful to be with her, even at the end of the world.

When they drift again, she lets him see everything, all barriers down, and it is a rush of pain and misery, but also the delight of her first drift with her father, and when they stumble out of the jaeger, he gathers her up, holds her close, and she is everything.

He curls around her that night, and when he wakes up, he traces the scars from both fights through her shirt. They are almost an exact mirror of each other, and she looks like she has wings. He brushes his lips along them, setting tender kisses along the healed flesh, and he has nothing but reverence for her in this moment. When she turns to look at him, he sees the unguarded tenderness on her face, and he wants nothing more than to stay in this exact moment with her.

\--

Instead, it is kaiju after kaiju after kaiju, until they finally know: they are a colonizing force, trying to wipe out the indigenous life forms (of course, he grouses, they are literally fighting to preserve the human species) before settling a new planet.

In the final moments before they walk into the breach, she is lying next to him again, and he wants nothing more than to tell her how much she means to him, how much he _loves_ her, but she is quieting him, giving him a small smile. She already knows, and so does he. When she crawls on top of him, his heart stutters, then races again as she presses kisses along his lips, his neck, his collar, and he can feel her hand over his heart, reassuring her that he is _there_. And when she stops, he nips gently at her neck, and her reaction is everything he’s ever wanted, and he wants to never let her go, this woman who has become his world.

When Octavia and Lincoln join them, he thinks that this, right here, is the world, and he will do everything he can to defend it.

\-- 

Into the breach, deeper, darker, and more foul than he could have imagined. He wants to never remember this experience, of fighting for their lives, the lives of the four people around them, fighting for the future of humanity, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let go of the memory of Clarke’s crying as they toss her mother’s body, with the bomb, into the breach.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the horror of realizing the bomb didn’t detonate, of leaving Clarke at the bottom of the ocean, knowing she has to detonate ArkAngel, and _not_ knowing if she’ll make it to the surface in time.

When she makes it to the surface, she isn’t breathing, and it feels like his heart stops and the world shatters around him. She’s got a pulse still, faint and thready, and he’s shouting down the sky, begging for the hanger to come get them, get _her_.

When the helicopter finally appears out of the sky, Octavia and Lincoln are waiting to grab her, and Octavia immediately starts her on oxygen, holds her steady until they can get her back to Jackson. Bellamy sits there, hands clasped tight, and he is the one to pick Clarke up and run to the hospital.

Jackson takes one look at both of them, and says “Bellamy, it’s up to her. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong that some rest and oxygen won’t fix.” Octavia takes his hand and leads him to the side of a bed, and there they wait, Lincoln standing off to the side.

It is two days of waiting, and after the first, he gently moves her over and curls against her, murmuring words of comfort to her. Octavia and Lincoln go off to shower and get food, bring some back to him, but he stays with her, waiting.

When he feels her turn in his arms, it is like the sun has burst from behind the clouds, and he is cradling her face in his hands, pressing his lips against hers, and it feels so right, and he can’t help but grin at the light in her eyes.

He’s had no idea that everything he’s been fighting for all these years has been her, and the happiness of the family around him. With Lincoln and Octavia at his back, and Clarke at his side, he is whole. 


End file.
